John
T. Wilson, "Federal Government Policy for Academic Science," Michigan
State University Sigma Xi lecture, April 11, 1968.

John
T. Wilson

1914-1990

Special Assistant to
the President1961-1963Professor of Psychology1961-1963, 1968-1974Vice-President and Dean ofFaculties 1968-1969Professor of Education 1968-1984Provost 1969-1975Acting President 1975President 1975-1978

Private higher education
has passed rapidly from a stage where a lack of funding posed the greatest
threat to its continued existence to a stage wherein the greatest pressures
toward its demise arise from the biggest source of money-the federal
government.

John T. Wilson

John Todd Wilson was born
March 7, 1914, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. He was educated at George
Washington University and the State University of Iowa, where he studied
psychology, philosophy, and education. During World War II while in the
U.S. Naval Reserve, he helped administer a selection and training program
for radar operators and Combat Information Center officers. Following
the war he obtained a PhD degree in psychology at Stanford, continuing
his earlier studies of human learning patterns.

Wilson spent a year working
jointly for the American Psychological Association and for George Washington
University, then returned to government service, first with the Office
of Naval Research, then with the newly-created National Science Foundation,
serving from 1955 to 1961 as assistant director of its Biological and
Medical Sciences Division.

In 1961 Wilson came to the
University of Chicago as special assistant to President George W. Beadle,
who had just arrived himself from Caltech. In 1963 Wilson returned to
the National Science Foundation as deputy director. Then in 1968 President
Edward Levi persuaded him to come back to the University, as vice-president
and dean of faculties.

In 1969 Wilson was appointed
Provost and held that position until Levi resigned to become U.S. attorney
general in February 1975. Wilson became acting president and expected
to fill the role until a replacement could be found for Levi. Instead,
Wilson himself was elected president in December of that year, with the
expectation that he would retire in a few years, near his 65th birthday.

Wilson had watched the University
grow during the early Levi years, especially after money flowed in from
the first phase of the "Campaign for Chicago," which closed successfully
in 1968. By the early 1970s, though, the University was again pinched
as inflation eroded income and cutbacks in government aid to education
began in earnest. As provost, Wilson responded by presenting the University
with a five-year austerity plan to bring the budget back into balance.